Little Talks
by hyenateeth
Summary: Ghosts aren't real. Ivan keeps telling himself that. Ghosts aren't real. Human AU, eventual RoChu.
1. Chapter 1

_Inspired by the song Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men. (Clearly.) Not a songfic._

_Thank you to my friend Matt for being a wonderful beta reader._

_Warnings in this chapter for (mentioned, non-graphic) death and vulgar language. Will eventually contain RoChu._

_This is a ghost story._

* * *

**Little Talks**

**1.**

Ivan used to dream a man was sitting on his chest.

When the man was there he could not move or open his eyes despite any effort he made, but he knew the man was there.

He could not see this man, but he would whisper to him, not with voice or language, but into his mind directly.

_Take me home,_ the man would whisper. _Please, I want to go home._

Ivan would always wake up after that.

* * *

When it first happened Ivan had been about 8 years old, and he had told his older sister over breakfast the next day.

"You know," said his sister. "Some legends say when a spirit sits on your chest you can't move."

Since Ivan was just a child, he had not listened.

* * *

"Damn this old house," his father said in thickly accented English, through puffs of cigar smoke that always clung to him like a cloud. "Fucking noisy."

Ivan had nodded absentmindedly and continued to watch his cartoon. Their house was noisy. It was old and creaked at odd times. Ivan liked it though.

He liked it better than the feint memory he had of their apartment back in Russia, which had been simultaneously too small and too lonely.

But they were in America now, they had immigrated for their father's work, and they had been able to buy a house big enough for Ivan, his papa and both his sisters.

(It would have been big enough for a mama too. She didn't exist though, so Ivan didn't dwell too much on that.)

Ivan didn't mind if the stairs creaked sometimes, even when no one was walking on them.

At least he never felt lonely when he was in this house.

* * *

_Take me home_ whispered the man. _Please, please._

* * *

The house had a great big staircase, that Ivan would play at the top of sometimes with the toy cars big sister got him for his birthday.

He would have liked to have played with other children, but Natalia was still too little, big sister was too old, and none of the boys in his neighborhood wanted to be friends. It was alright though. He could play alone, he was good at it.

Big sister always told him to put up his cars when he was finished, and Papa would cough and say something along the lines of "Someone's going to break their neck on those damn things Ivan."

He usually did. Sometimes he forgot.

He forgot once when he was nine, and one toy car, a red Italian model the name of which Ivan couldn't remember, was left on the second step from the top.

That was the car Ivan stepped on that evening, just before the sun finished setting while climbing the stairs to go get ready for bed.

Predictably the car had slipped out from under him taking his legs with it, and for one terrifying instant he was falling backwards, and he was going to hit the stairs and _someone's going to break their neck_ and-

And a hand, firm and warm wrapped around Ivan's and he was pulled back up and onto the top step, his knees banging painfully against the wood, but his neck decidedly intact.

Ivan's hands hit the hardwood of the floor, and he looked behind him, at the toy car that had fallen halfway down the stairs and had an impressive dent in the metal.

Then he looked forward.

No one was there, no one to grab his hand and save him. Suddenly Ivan started crying, out of pain or fear or confusion he knew not.

He didn't know who could have grabbed his hand.

He didn't know _what_ could have grabbed his hand.

But he was safe, he was alive.

"Thank you," he choked out through tears, because he was thankful.

He wondered if whatever it was heard him.

* * *

When Ivan was 12 he bought a Ouija Board and put it in the middle of his room, placing his hands on it.

"What was it that pulled me up the stairs when I was nine?" he asked the board.

No answer.

"Is anyone here?" he asked.

No answer. Plastic stayed stationary on the board.

(He still had his dreams though. He wanted to help the man get home, he really did.)

* * *

"The only bad thing," his sister would complain sometimes, "is how draughty this house is. Sometimes it will be in the middle of a hot day and I'll hit a chilly patch. I swear, I think that's why papa coughs all the time."

Ivan had never noticed. It was always chilly to him.

* * *

"Hey freakshow!" shouted one of the boys in Ivan's neighborhood. "How's the weather up there?"

Ivan ignored him like he alway did. At age 13 he already towered over the other boys, even the boys harassing him at the moment, who were a year older than him. It was funny, in a way. He had always been the small until he was about 10, and he had been teased for that too.

It didn't matter much to him. He could ignore them. He focused instead on the contents of the white plastic bag in his hands. He had just bought a new model plane kit, some sort of American fighter jet. Model planes were his new hobby. When he worked on them his sister didn't ask him why he wasn't out playing with the other boys.

"Hey Ivan, how's that sister of yours?"

Ivan ignored them. Maybe he could start on the plane right when he got home.

"Man, have you seen the knockers on that chick? I'd like to get me some of that!"

Ivan's grip tightened around the bag, and his jaw clenched. Was it his turn to do the dishes that night? He hoped it wasn't. He didn't have homework tonight, so maybe he could get some real progress in with the construction...

"Hey freak, do you think your sister likes it up the ass?"

The box hit the ground as Ivan whirled around and lunged at the boy.

* * *

Later that night his big sister cried. "How could you fight Ivan! You're such a sweet boy, why would you do that?"

Ivan said nothing and continued to nurse his throbbing eye. It was not so bad. The other boy had run away with a broken nose and a chipped tooth, and his friend with a cut on the back of his head where he had fallen to the pavement.

"What if you had really hurt them Ivan? Their parents are threatening to sue, and you know we can't afford that right now, not with father!"

Ivan scowled. "I had to fight them."

"Why? Why did you have too?"

Ivan did not answer.

His sister sighed. "I'm going to have to tell father, Ivan."

"No you don't."

"Ivan-"

"You're always saying how we shouldn't stress him because he's sick. This would just stress him out."

She didn't say anything. But she never said anything in regards to papa's illness. The doctor had used a lot of words, words like _carcinoma_, and _malignant_, and _maybe a year_.

She never said anything.

Ivan stood and went to his room, locking himself inside.

The plane kit had been crushed during the fight, but Ivan refused to cry. He laid down on his bed and stared up at his ceiling, focusing on nothing but the ache of his bruised eye.

That night he dreamed his head was lying in someone's lap and they were stroking his hair, comforting him.

* * *

His father died a few weeks later.

They never told him about the cause of Ivan's black eye.

He never asked.

* * *

Natalia slept in the same bed as Ivan for a month or so after papa died.

Ivan had no dreams when she was in bed with him, and he felt much warmer than he normally did.

Ivan chose to believe it was just the shared body warmth of his sister pressed up against him, trying not to cry.

* * *

He started looking for a job. His sister couldn't take care of them all on her own.

He was too young for a legal job, but he was tall enough to lie.

He stopped paying any attention to his dreams.

* * *

"I think we need to move," said his big sister in a very serious voice.

Ivan felt a pain in his chest, but it was little Natalia that yelped "Why?"

"It's too expensive... We can't keep up with the payments, and this is an expensive neighborhood..."

Natalia looked like she was about to throw a fit. Ivan just felt numb. This was the only place that had ever really felt like home. This was the only place he never felt alone.

Suddenly, across the room, a glass fell off the countertop and shattered forcefully on the ground. They all jumped and were left staring at the glass.

No one said it, but they all wondered what could have knocked it over.

* * *

The house sold quickly.

As they were packing Ivan found an old dented toy car, and a cheap, plastic Ouija board.

He threw them away.

* * *

On move out day they kept misplacing things, and then finding them again in odd places.

"It's almost like the house doesn't want us to leave," laughed Ivan's sister.

Ivan ignored the comment.

They moved into an apartment. Ivan was 14.

He stopped having the dreams.

Eventually he stopped thinking about them.

He didn't think about them again for another 12 years.

* * *

_Next chapter should be up soon-ish. In the mean time reviews are appreciated._


	2. Chapter 2

_Warnings in this chapter for slight discussion of alcoholism and mild violence. _

_Thanks again to Matt for being a wonderful beta._

* * *

**Little Talks**

**2.**

In America, alcoholism was a disease.

Ivan never really knew how to respond to that when one of the therapists he was made to go to said that to him. _"Alcoholism is a disease."_

He always thought about making some kind of snide remark about why was he fired if it was a disease, but he doesn't. They would probably just say something along the lines of "Now Mr. Braginsky, you weren't _fired_. You were _asked_ to take a sabbatical to work through some of your... _issues_."

An unpaid sabbatical. An indefinite, unpaid sabbatical. Right.

Ivan really hated his therapists. They were so sickeningly American, with their fake plastered on smiles. Ivan really hated that about America. In America everyone had a fake smile.

Still, he always faked a smile right back at them when he talked to them. It's the only way to deal with them really.

* * *

Ivan was crawling out of his skin, and he really couldn't believe he _missed_ throwing luggage onto a plane.

Ivan had taken the baggage handling position because it was really as close to planes as he could get, considering he hadn't gone to college.

He sort of hated it. Seeing the planes was nice, big and majestic and metal and so much nicer than the models he had made as a kid, but the rest of the job, the lifting, the sorting, the stupid reflective vest...

He hated it.

He used to think a lot about applying for a position in airport security, just so he could work indoors and not be subjected tot he whims of the weather, but he didn't really know what kind of qualifications you needed for that job.

It probably involved a background check.

He definitely hated background checks because he was almost always sure that they were going to see that his father had been in the Russian army as a youth, and that always made them look at Ivan funny. Ivan didn't know how to explain to them that his father wasn't some sort of Russian spy, that behind his thick grey mustache and hard eyes was nothing more than a cold, bitter single father who smoked too much and cursed too much and died when Ivan was a teenager.

It didn't matter though, because it turned out even if you were just a baggage handler airlines weren't too pleased about an employee coming to work drunk as many times as he did.

He didn't want to go to the stupid anonymous meetings they sent him to, so he didn't. He only sometimes went to the therapists. He was probably never going to get his job back. He mostly just stayed inside his small apartment, bored out of his mind and savoring the burn of alcohol in the back of his throat.

_Alcoholism is a disease._

Yeah right.

* * *

His sisters called him sometimes. His big sister, who had raised him his whole life, though only legally for about four years, had found a husband a while back. They were talking about having a family, though Ivan couldn't understand why she would want to subject herself to that again after raising her siblings.

Little Natalia, who was not so little anymore, changed jobs a lot due to her temper, but had been working for about a year as a waitress and talked about a boy sometimes who Ivan thought she may be dating, and he sort of hoped it was true because she had gone through a phase of wanting to marry Ivan that sort of bothered him even though their big sister said it was normal kid stuff.

They told him these things.

He had not told them anything.

He figured they'd all be happier that way.

* * *

Maybe Ivan was lonely.

Maybe he felt displaced, like he had no home anymore.

Maybe he just really liked the taste of vodka.

* * *

He remembered the big house with a lot of stairs.

He never felt lonely there.

* * *

There were a lot of words one would use to describe Ivan.

Impulsive was not one of them. _Large_, _intimidating_, _creepy_, _quiet_, those were all words that had been used to describe Ivan in the past.

Not impulsive.

Not that he was particularly cautious either. If Ivan were to describe himself, he would have used the word _average_.

(The people who described him with all those other words would have doubtlessly laughed at this description, but no one ever said Ivan was self-aware.)

So why, if Ivan was in fact not impulsive, did he buy that bus ticket? It was not a particularly good idea, to take a trip to his hometown shortly after essentially losing his job. Sure he had a little money saved up, but he didn't really know what he hoped to accomplish in going to see his old house.

Boredom and nostalgia effected everyone at some point, he supposed as he boarded the bus. Also he had been drunk while scheduling the trip.

So there was that.

* * *

The landlord of what used to be Ivan's home was an older man with a scruffy, patchy beard and an inability to pronounce Ivan's last name correctly.

"Well Mr Brayjinsky," said the man, scratching his beard. "I'm surprised you want to look at this property. I can't seem to rent it for the life of me. Tenants are always moving out as fast as they move in. Won't ever say why though."

Ivan did not care about the people who lived there after him. "So it's empty?"

* * *

Ivan did not have enough money to buy a house. He did have enough money to rent one for a bit.

Especially a house that no one else wanted.

So he wrote the landlord a sizable check, including a fee to keep the sparse furniture that was in the house and another for the last-minute nature of the transaction, and by that evening he was unlocking _his_ house.

It was dark in the house, and cold, cold like he remembered it to be. A real smile almost flickered across his face as he tightened his scarf and turned a light on.

He felt less lonely already.

* * *

That night Ivan dreamed that a man was sitting on his chest, gripping his neck.

_Take me home_! shouted the man, tightening his grip. _Take me home, take me home!_

* * *

Ivan's eyes flew open as he woke up with a start, catching his breath, hand going to his throat.

There was no one there.

It had been a nightmare, that was all.

He sighed heavily and laid back down. How odd. He almost never had nightmares. His dreams were always unremarkable, average. Maybe it was being in this new (well, old) place, in a bed that wasn't his, that was throwing him off.

Yeah, yeah that was probably all.

Sighing again he stood. He was thirsty. He walked into the bathroom, flicking a light on and walking to the sink, palming water directly from the faucet into his mouth. (_Get cups, _he reminded himself. _And plates and bowls and... You didn't think this through did you Ivan?_)

Satisfied, he splashed a little water on his face then glanced in the mirror.

Large, purpling bruises were forming on his neck.

Bruises shaped like hands.

* * *

That couldn't be right though.

It must have been something else. Maybe while sleeping on the bus up here he had hit his neck and the bruises were slow in forming. Maybe he had tightened his scarf too tight. Maybe he had grabbed himself while he was sleeping.

_(Maybe he was going insane.)_

* * *

The Braginsky way of dealing with bad situations was quite simple: You pretended they weren't happening, you didn't talk about them, and you tried not to think about them.

The next day Ivan wrapped his scarf around his bruised neck and went to the local Wal-Mart to buy some cheap dishes. He got home and sat in the dining room, and checked his cellphone, which he had turned off while on the bus and had neglected to turn back on.

There was one message, from his older sister. "Ivan? It's me. I tried calling your home phone but you weren't there... Call me back when you get this I guess."

Ivan did not call her back. He didn't know what he would say to her.

So he tugged his scarf just a little bit tighter and ordered some takeout, which he ate in the living room alone before going to bed and falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

He didn't think about the bruises.

* * *

He did think about the creaks of the house though.

He had forgotten how noisy these old houses really were.

* * *

Within the next few days he went to a cafe to boot up his old, clunky laptop and take advantage of the free wifi, and order a cup of black coffee.

He googled "bruises appearing for no reason."

There were too many possible answers to really figure anything out. None of them really explained why they were shaped like hands.

He took a gulp of his coffee in frustration and burned his tongue rather badly.

* * *

After a little over a week, when his bruises had all but faded, his sister left a panicked message on his cell phone. "Ivan! Ivan are you there? I tried calling your w-work since you hadn't been answering... They said you were on sabbatical and were supposed to be going to a therapist but you haven't been? Ivan, where are you? Has something happened? Please call me back!"

It sounded like she was going to cry. He didn't want her to worry, but he didn't really want to talk to her either, so he waited until very late at night and left a message on her cell phone.

"It's me. I'm alright. I'm just taking a vacation, don't worry about me. Traveling the country, looking at landmarks. I just need some time to clear my head."

After leaving the message he sat up in bed, listening to the creaks and groans of the house.

* * *

"Why did everyone move away from here so fast?" Ivan asked the open air one day.

As if in answer one of his plastic cups suddenly fell forcefully from it's place on the counter.

Ivan remembered shattering glass and drew in a breath.

* * *

Ghosts aren't real. Ivan kept telling himself that. _"Ghosts aren't real."_

* * *

_Listen to me! _shouted the man in his dream. _Hear me! I want to go home! I just want to go home!_

* * *

He smelled smoke when he woke up one morning, maybe two weeks after moving in, and for a minute he thought maybe the house had caught on fire. He panicked and shot up in bed, then realized what the smoke smelled like.

Cigars.

It was cigar smoke, just like...

Ivan's stomach lurched.

_No. No it can't be it-_

He staggered out of bed, legs not quite caught up to his brain, and stumbled to the door, flinging it open, looking for the source of the smell because it couldn't, it couldn't-

There it was, in the hallway, a few feet away from his door. It was like the look of heat in the air, glimmering and distorted and hard to look at, but still Ivan knew what it was the instant he laid eyes on it. He felt the truth of it in the pit of his stomach, and he stood frozen, staring at it.

This _thing_... It was a person.

It had no face or hair or any defining features at all really, and it's form is only barely defined, but it doesn't matter. Ivan knows. He can feel it.

_I should run, _was the first thing he thought, but he did not know where to, and in the time it took him to think it the figure started to walk, away from him in the direction of the stairs, and the next thing he thought was _I should call out to it,_ but it had already disappeared into thin air, taking the smell of cigar smoke with it.

Ivan felt his knees weaken and he slumped against the wall, trembling violently, fully aware that a man of his size rendered shaky from fear probably would have looked comical to an outside viewer, and not particularly caring.

He wanted to think it wasn't real

He wanted to think he had been dreaming, imagining it, drunk, going insane, _anything_ that would make sense of the apparition he had seen.

Nothing seemed to fit.

Ivan sort of wanted to throw up. He wanted a drink more though. As if in a daze he went downstairs and into the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of vodka he had purchased a few days earlier.

It was barely to his lips though when he felt it, a cold, clammy wave washing over him, and before he could react a plate sitting on the table from the night before's dinner was flying at his head.

Instinct took over, instinct steeled from years of being the large kid people picked fights with when they wanted to look tough in front of their friends, and at the last second he dodged, the plate hitting the wall behind him with enough force that it cracked slightly before bouncing off the plaster and hitting the floor.

The instant it hit the ground though, Ivan knew he was perhaps in a worse situation than a second ago.

The bottle of vodka fell as Ivan abandoned it in favor of shielding his face, shattering glass joining the sudden barrage of noise that started as the furniture began to shake violently and the cabinets flew open, plastic dishes flying at Ivan, hitting him with surprisingly painful force, bouncing off his arms and clattering to the ground.

"Wait!" shouted Ivan, his panic and confusion shutting down his mind. "Wait! Stop!" He didn't know what was happening, what to do, what to say, what was happening, but he did know that he was in danger, that whatever, whoever was in this house was angry, and as he sunk to his knees and a chair flew up in the air and began to move toward him, his eyes clenched shut and the words fell out of his mouth before he had even thought them.

_"You saved my life when I was eight!"_

Everything stopped.

Silence hung heavy in the air, and, after a long moment, Ivan let out the breath he had not realized he had been holding and slowly, slowly, opened his eyes and peeked out from the shield of his arms.

The heavy, wooden chair that the landlord had provided him was suspended in the air, less than a foot from his face.

"You saved my life," whispered Ivan, though he didn't really know why. "I was going to fall down the stairs. You saved me."

Slowly the chair started to move again, slowly this time, until with a dull thud it was placed back where it had started on the floor.

Then Ivan saw it again, the glimmer, except this time it didn't stay a glimmer. It swirled, darkened, until it looked to be made of smoke, and it was decidedly human shaped now, and it kept pulsing, molding, changing, twisting and twisting until from the smoke a man started to emerge, and soon it wasn't smoke at all, but a man standing before Ivan, looking down at him.

He was small, slender, with Asian features and long, ink black hair. Slowly the man crouched, looking Ivan in the eyes, and opened his mouth, syllables falling slowly and unevenly out of his mouth as if a voice was something he had forgotten he had.

"I... Ivan?"

Ivan had never seen this man before, but he knew him.

This was the man from his dreams.

* * *

_This chapter took a little longer than expected in getting out, but I hope to get the next one out fairly soon._

_Trivia fact: I kind of love writing ghost stories. This is not the first time I have written one._


	3. Chapter 3

_Sorry it took so long to get this up. Thanks again to Matt for the beta._

* * *

**Little Talks**

**3.**

A paradigm shift, in it's most basic sense, is an overhaul of one's worldview, a break in one's fundamental patterns.

A paradigm shift was what Ivan was experiencing as the man, the man who had appeared from thin air, was crouching in front of him.

Not that he knew that of course. Ivan did not know what a paradigm shift was. He had never needed to know, though really, even if he had known, it wouldn't have helped much.

"I-van," the man croaked out again, then smiled, and it was almost comforting if not for the fact that he was fairly sure this was the thing that had been attacking him not moments before. "You are so big now."

"You..." rasped Ivan, trying to organize his thoughts. "You... a ghost..."

The man's smile dropped away, but he nodded.

"Ghosts... Ghosts aren't real..." muttered Ivan futilely, but it is no use. The belief that Ivan had spent his entire adult life building, that humans were it and that ghosts and goblins and fairies and anything else he believed in at age nine were just things of bedtime stories, was rapidly slipping away and leaving confusion and reality and a thick undercurrent of horror.

Not knowing where to look, he looked at the ground. Glass and alcohol covered the tile of the kitchen, and Ivan was briefly thankful that he had bought plastic dishes instead of anything more... breakable.

Then he looked back up, summoning up the nerve to properly examine the man before him, who looked back with a kind of distant fascination, letting Ivan observe him.

At first glance he looked normal, like if you looked over him nothing would be wrong except a funny suit that was nothing like the modern styles. The more Ivan stared at the man though, the more... off he seemed. He was too pale, with an almost blueish tint to his skin, and his eyes... There was something wrong about them, they were... sharper, clearer, brighter, _something_. It was like- Like what his sister said about eyes being how you saw someone's soul was true, but now without skin or fluid or anything physical to dilute it all that was left was _soul_.

For some reason Ivan could not look away.

There was a moment of silence before the ghost smiled again. "I have missed you Ivan," he said, and his voice was almost normal this time.

"Missed me..." breathed Ivan heavily, still captivated by his eyes. "You... missed... oh god you tried to kill me!" In that instant he tore his eyes away and fell back, his hand landing heavy on the cabinet behind him, just barely keeping him up and away from the broken glass.

"No!" snapped the man, his face twisting into an unhappy expression, and he seemed to flicker, like for less than a moment he was transparent and then he wasn't, and Ivan wasn't sure if he had imagined it. "Not kill. Scare. I did not recognize you. I thought you were just... another."

Ivan's mind could not properly process this, and his lungs seemed to be suffering for it, his breathing rapidly becoming more laborious, coming out hard gasps. "You... You choked me..."

The man leaned forward slightly, and reached out his hand as if to touch Ivan's hidden throat. "And I apologize Ivan, I did not-"

But before he could even make contact with Ivan, Ivan felt him. A cold, nauseating wave of sensation sent him reeling back from the outstretched hand. The man stopped, hand midair, his expression resolutely blank and restrained. They were both still for a long moment. Then the man's hand abruptly dropped along with his head, black hair falling and masking his expression for half a second, before he disappeared entirely, like he was never there.

Ivan's stomach dropped. "Wait!" he called to the air. "Wait! Come back!"

There was no response.

An unsettling feeling of loneliness gripped him.

* * *

Ivan sat on the ground for a while, surrounded by dishes and broken glass.

This house was haunted.

But _of course_ it was. It all made sense _now_ of course. The noises, the falling and disappearing items, the dreams...

The dreams.

This man had been in Ivan's dreams since he was a child. He had stroked his hair when he had been sad. He had saved his life.

Ivan felt like he knew him, like he was an old friend whom he had known his whole life and grown up with.

But he wasn't. God, Ivan didn't even know his name. He was a ghost, he was _dead_.

_Ivan was friends with a dead person._

Ivan needed to calm down, he realized. He didn't need to be having a heart attack on top of having his entire perception of the world shifted while he was already having some kind of midlife crisis. (_Does it count as a midlife crisis if you are only 26?_ he wondered before remembering he definitely had bigger things to worry about.)

He needed to calm down.

He needed to get out of this house.

He was so lost in his own head that he almost left the house in just the sweatpants and shirt he wore for nightclothes, but somehow he managed to get out the door fully dressed and with his laptop in tow.

He ended up at that coffee shop with a drink he had no intention of actually consuming, and free internet.

And he read.

He read and he read for hours but by the end of it he felt no wiser. It was the bruises all over again: it wasn't that there wasn't an answer, it was that there were _too many_.

Had the man died a violent death, or did he have unfinished business? Was he trapped on earth for a crime in life? Did he want revenge?

(And none of these sites described the ghosts eyes... the intense, captivating eyes that Ivan could still not get out of his brain.)

Ivan was not sure what to believe anymore.

He wanted to go back to sleep, right here in the middle of the coffee shop, exhausted from the mental and emotional strain.

He didn't.

He was afraid of what he might dream.

* * *

The thing was though, he had to go back to the house eventually.

He supposed he didn't have to. Was this what the other families had done, simply left and never come back? Perhaps that had been the man's goal, to chase out people he didn't want in his house. (It was his wasn't it? He had lived there longer than anyone else, Ivan supposed.)

But the man had recognized Ivan. He had seemed to be _fond_ of Ivan.

It felt wrong to just leave.

(_Please, take me home._)

He couldn't just leave.

* * *

The coffee shop closed around 10, and the waitress who had been giving him strange looks all day finally asked him to leave.

So he went back to the house.

It was quiet and dark and lonely. Not knowing what else to do, Ivan sat on the couch in the living room not bothering to turn the light on.

He sat and he sat, and even though he had drunk more cups of coffee then he could be bothered to count, he felt exhaustion overtake him quickly, and soon he felt his head nodding. Then he felt nothing.

He was sitting on the couch, head looking straight ahead, unable to turn it. Someone was sitting next to him, and even though he couldn't see who it was, he knew.

_My name is Yao,_ said the man. _Wang Yao. You are Braginsky Ivan, and I am Wang Yao._

Ivan woke up.

He blinked his eyes open calmly, and he was still sitting on the couch and it was dark now and that meant-

"You know this whole talking to me through my dreams thing is really weird," he said to the air.

"I'm sorry," it replied, and then it was not so much air as it was the man, still sitting next to him on the couch. "I am out of practice with verbal communication. I didn't know I could really do it actually."

"So why me then?" Ivan turned his head to the man, the ghost, _Yao_. "Why am I special? Why not just chase me away like you did the others."

The ghost was staring ahead into darkness, face somber. It gave Ivan the chance to look at him in the low light, his delicate face, his long hair, his neatly tailored, quite old-fashioned suit. If Ivan were to be completely honest with himself, Yao, as he had called himself, was someone Ivan would have found attractive. He would have caught his eye from across one of the bars he went to sometimes after he was off work. Someone Ivan would have never approached but simply been content to look at while he drank.

If he were being completely honest with himself Ivan would have admitted that.

Ivan did not make a habit of being honest with himself.

"You listened to me," said Yao simply.

Ivan didn't know what to take from that, so he nodded.

"I thought you left forever," whispered the ghost, still looking ahead. "Most people... No one has ever come back."

"Now?" asked Ivan. "Or when I was a kid?"

"Both times." Yao looked at him suddenly, and his eyes seemed to have a faint, unnatural glow about them in the dark. It should have been unsettling. It wasn't.

"Ivan," he said. "I want to go home."

"I don't know how to get you home," responded Ivan, looking the ghost straight in the eye. Ivan had never been big on eye contact, but the ghost's eyes were captivating.

Yao smiled slightly, tiredly. "Neither do I."

There was nothing else to say for the night.

* * *

Ivan slept on the couch that night, and maybe he should have slept worse considering he had definite knowledge that he was, in fact, in a haunted house, but he slept deep and restfully.

And he dreamed.

He dreamed of his father's funeral. In his dream he was standing in a scratchy suit a few feet from the casket, and he was supposed to be looking in.

He didn't want to look in, didn't want to look at the empty shell of his father. He had seen his father before he died, sickly and grotesque, thin and hollow, and he did not want to see him dead he didn't _he didn't-_

He woke up in the morning when he rolled over and fell of the couch.

He laid on the floor for a while, thinking. Waking up on the floor wasn't necessarily unfamiliar to him. Except this time he wasn't hungover. But he felt kind of hungover.

When he was sixteen and seventeen he used to get stomach pains when he was stressed, and he used to worry he might be getting ulcers. His father used to get ulcers.

He thought maybe that was what was happening now. His mouth felt dry and he felt sick.

Maybe he was hungover from all the new information he had drunk yesterday. He still felt the low burn of terror, but it was mostly covered up by confusion and just the general feeling of being overwhelmed that kept him from taking any action at all, kept him on the floor.

A few months ago he was loading baggage into a plane miles away.

Now he was laying on the floor, pondering the existence of a ghost.

Was this what everyone called "rock bottom"? Ivan did not have friends or family or a career. He did not have a car or pet.

He had alcohol and plastic plates and a rented house and a spirit haunting him.

* * *

When he was sweeping glass off his kitchen floor a few minutes later he wondered about when he had almost fallen down the stairs.

He also realized that this ghost may have been the most consistent thing in his life until he moved. And now he was back. Somehow.

Ivan didn't exactly believe in fate, but this was more than coincidence.

* * *

Ivan felt useless most of the time.

He had worked all through high school to help his family but it never _really_ helped, and that fact had sat hard and cold in his stomach until he drowned it in the alcohol that his older coworkers would buy for him.

Now he was a drunk. People don't want help from drunks.

_(I want to go home.)_

People didn't want help from Ivan.

* * *

Rock bottom felt awfully like the pinnacle of something.

(Paradigm shifts are funny like that.)

* * *

Yao appeared in full again in the late afternoon, standing in the dining room, looking out the window. Saying nothing, just staring.

Before he could stop himself, Ivan spoke to him. "What's it like to be dead?"

Yao did not speak for a long moment, but he did not move or flicker either. Then he spoke.

"Cold, mostly."

Ivan nodded.

Then he tightened his scarf.

"I want to help you," he said. "I want to help you get home."

Yao looked at him with those eyes of his, and Ivan felt the cold inside him alleviate a little.

"Why?" asked the ghost.

Ivan shrugged. "Because you asked me."

_Because I want my life to have a point_ is what he didn't say.

Yao just kept looking at him. Then, for an instant, his face crumpled as if he may cry, but he vanished into thin air before anything came of it.

_Thank you_ whispered a voice in Ivan's head. _Thank you, thank you._

Ivan was still not entirely convinced he wasn't going insane, but for the first time in a long time he felt a warm flicker of happiness within him.

* * *

_Once again sorry for the long wait. End of the semester was crazy. Next chapter will probably be out sometime in January, as the end of December is also a hectic time for me. More will happen next chapter too, hah._


End file.
